A must-listen for fans of classic, cathartic American indie rock. These 11 songs, loaded with gritty determination, dramatic dynamic swells and gang vocal shouts, might just make you believe again in whatever it was you stopped believing in.

Hallelujah the Hills has racked up its share of war stories through more than 10 years of making music on the Boston scene, accruing a body of work that reflects Walsh’s interest in energetic, sometimes-shambolic rock music with a sly sense of humor embedded within.

There’s a lot of postmodern confusion on A Band is Something to Figure Out, but Hallelujah the Hills are post-postmodern, reconstructing the human experience through sheer enthusiasm, using their joyous hooks and choruses as earnest expressions of emotion rather than ironic juxtapositions.

Hallelujah The Hills’ fifth full-length album…brings their flavor of indie rock back to our ears so we can do air guitar in our bedrooms and learn new lyrics to scream live. There’s chipper synth, succinct drums, and Walsh’s rounded tone of voice that never ruffles your feathers the wrong way.

Massachusetts indie rock institution Hallelujah The Hills' [fifth record] is called A Band Is Something To Figure Out, but it could just as easily be called This Is What It Sounds Like When A Rock Band Has It All Figured Out…Rock frameworks that reliably stretch to accommodate subversive, irreverent impulses…The band's best outing to date.

Few do it with the style and imagination of Hallelujah the Hills. [It's] is a blast from start to finish, every minute packed with hooky twists and turns. Mastermind Ryan Walsh can write a hell of a chorus, too, hitting plenty of Pollard-ian, singalong sweet spots over the album’s 12 tunes.

Mr. Walsh, the leader of Boston indie rock greats Hallelujah The Hills, is both smarter than your average bear and -- probably by a wider margin -- smarter than your average songwriter, and he writes, among other things, songs about writing songs that are not, you know, really just songs about writing songs.

Obviously, the talents of band members Brian Rutledge on horns and David Bentley on cello are a highlight and make a delicate song like “Care to Collapse” or “Hungry Ghost Extraordinaire” among the most memorable and recognizable songs, both from the album and live.

There is more introspection on display than usual, especially in the lyrics, but Hallelujah The Hills have simply grown into the band they always threatened to become. This is a happy ending for all involved.

It's a great introduction to No One Knows What Will Happen Next, and despite the warning in that title, and even if we don't know yet what that album will be, "Hungry Ghost Extraordinaire" is surely a good omen.

Hallelujah the Hills’s lyrics are full of couplets that are clever and funny and touching and use words that you have probably not recently heard in a rock song, like, say, documentarian or cohorts, without sacrificing any of the rhythm that lyrics have to have to carry a rock song. AND they have loud guitars. What more could you ask for?

It’s this open-minded and open-ended approach that has made HTH one of Boston’s most prized pop possessions. We’re not likely to hear a local album that trumps the wonders of Colonial Drones anytime soon.

Accented by cello and brass, HTH delivered a dynamically charged set of literate indie rock that filtered the free-associative wordplay of Guided By Voices through the antediluvian old-time feel of the Decemberists.

[The Silver Jews] followed an energetic set from Hallelujah the Hills — loud and non-showy with six dudes on stage including a trumpeter, a cellist, and a thunderous drummer who pounds with such force he’s regularly launched off his stool.

Read further into interviews with Walsh, and he frequently brings up Davids Lynch, Byrne, and Foster Wallace. Walsh identifies with their work and shares, in a small way, their desire to leave ends unraveled, to create scenes without pushing them toward a conclusion. This is Prepare To Qualify's unifying and best aspect.

There is an element of cacaphony in Prepare to Qualify, but it keeps you guessing. It keeps you captivated all the while wondering, “Why in the hell am I so interested?” Just keep listening - it’ll hit you eventually, and I guarantee you’ll keep coming back to it.

For a few moments during Hallelujah the Hills’ EP release show on Saturday, everything seemed to dissolve into blissful madness. Members of HTH and Ho-Ag crammed simultaneously, almost comically, onto Great Scott’s tiny stage in a collision of bodies, instruments, blaring sounds and styles.

Rarely do entire albums translate successfully as live setlists, but Hallelujah the Hills proved that their debut Collective Psychosis Begone is an exception to the rule Saturday night at the Middle East Upstairs. Breezing through the ebbs and flows of the excellent album like grizzled veterans, Ryan Walsh and his bandmates treated the crowd to a commanding performance.

There’s something intimate about this album — it feels as if you’re in a room with these guys, and they laugh at your jokes, and they play a few songs, and you applaud, then you all go out and get drunk together.

A child reading a poem, a throat clearing, a voice altering microphone treatment, all these things are slipped in without much explanation, but also without pretense. The whole record is beautifully odd, more than a little off even when it’s just one person with a guitar…so how could a few real world sounds make it any stranger?

Numbers like ‘Wave Backwards To Massachusetts,’ ‘Hallelujah The Hills,’ and ‘Slow Motion Records Broken at Break Neck Speeds’ showcased their ability to combine joyful, playful, and intelligent all within the same number.

The band's ensemble structure (cello, trumpet, and melodica) and learned lyricism echoes the stage-packing sounds of Arcade Fire, Danielson, Bright Eyes, and Decemberists, while its shambolic, maximalist barroom aura recalls Robert Pollard, another songwriter infrequently at a loss for words.

They are a band full of contradictions. With guitar, strings, keyboards and brass all at the band’s disposal, they’ve created some wonderful arrangements that are crowded yet manage to retain a surprising amount of clarity... There’s just so much potential on display here that it is hard not to be excited about Hallelujah The Hills.